End of the Line, End of the Galaxy
by vigilantism
Summary: "Are you sure you want to do this? The kid you remember from the war, you know this isn't him." "He's still Bucky." I combined the idea of where 616 Bucky is now - the Watcher on the Wall - with the movie canon. I wanted to fit the story with the space theme, but I also wanted to write the fandom that was nominated, which was inexplicably the Cap movieverse and not comicsverse


The doors banged open and the footsteps that had pounded up to them abruptly stopped.

"You found him?" came the question.

Nick Fury regarded the man in front of him with one unimpressed eye. "Nine months, and I don't even get a hello? I thought you were all about old fashioned manners, _captain_."

Steve Rogers shifted his weight, and his gaze dropped for half a second. "Hi," he said, before reasserting himself, almost as if he hadn't slipped at all. "Where is he?"

Fury's visible eye rolled and he turned back to the screen he'd been looking at.

"Are you sure you want to do this? The kid you remember from the war, you know this isn't him."

"He's still Bucky."

"You sure about that? He's not."

"Look, did you bring me here to talk me out of it, because-"

"No, that would be a waste of my time."

Steve noticed the wording – a waste of _Fury's_ time, not his. That was pretty typical of the former S.H.I.E.L.D. leader, but it was a little grating, all things considered.

"He's been working for me for a couple months. Here and there."

"A couple _months_? Why the hell didn't you tell me sooner?"

Fury hit a button on the keyboard and turned back around. "Did it ever occur to you that he's avoiding you on purpose? Maybe you think you want to see him, rekindle some old partnership, but what about what he wants?"

"It occurred to me. I just…I just want to talk to him."

Fury nodded. "Uh-huh. Talk to him and convince him he's a good kid. You read that file?"

"I read it. Doesn't matter. Where is he?"

Steve's patience was wearing thin, and it showed on his face and in the way his hands clenched and unclenched at his sides.

Fury's mouth twitched. "You ever been to space?"

Steve had to admit that the trip into space was pretty cool. He'd done things no one else had, before, and other people had done this space travel thing, but…it was amazing, watching the land fall away, and then the clouds. He wondered if any of the guys he'd fought with had even ever thought that this would be possible, that you could actually sit in the stars and look down at the Earth.

He got kind of choked up thinking about that, and had to look away from the window, down at his hands.

"Everything all right, sir?" asked the man in the black fatigues sitting across from him.

Steve nodded, and offered a wan smile that he hoped passed for the real thing. "Oh. Yeah, it's just. Overwhelming, you know?"

The former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent seemed to accept that, and nodded. "The first time you see it like that hits everyone. I guess even Captain America."

Steve's smile was more genuine, hearing it put like that. "I'm just a man. That down there is the whole world. How could it not hit you?"

The man didn't answer.

"You been up here a lot, then?" Steve asked.

"A few times," the man answered. "It's never like the first one, but it's still pretty cool."

"We're going to a…a space station? A satellite? I wasn't real clear on the difference."

"Orbiting space station. Bigger than a satellite. That's just a stop, though, for you."

"Is there a reason Fury didn't come with us? I was expecting. I should've asked earlier, I just…I was kind of distracted. By the view, you know."

For the first time, the agent looked uncomfortable. "Fury doesn't really say where or why he does things."

"Uh-huh."

Steve had a feeling that it wasn't the truth, but he decided not to push it. No sense in making things uncomfortable when you were stuck in a metal tube with someone.

The rest of the trip, Steve spent more or less lost in his own thoughts, staring at the Earth as it got smaller and thinking too many things to get anything in proper order.

The space station was another marvel that Steve couldn't have imagined in his wildest dreams. Even knowing it was there and even seeing the pictures Fury had given him hadn't prepared him for what it really looked like. It was _enormous_ , floating glass and metal and probably plastic of some kind, just hanging in space like an alien shopping mall. At least, that's how it seemed to Steve. The helicarrier had been impressive, but the space station? It was indescribable.

While Captain America didn't need a parachute, he _did_ need a space suit. The shuttle docked and the agent helped him with the suit, then got his own on. They made their way out the airlock and onto the station proper. Steve didn't bother asking how the gravity worked; he figured he wouldn't know enough about this technology to understand the answer. But instead of floating around, like he thought they'd do, people up here were walking around like they were on the actual ground. He tried not to stare with his mouth open as he followed the agent out. He hoped the helmet obscured the dumbstruck look he must have had on his face.

Most people didn't pay much attention to Steve as he followed the agent who'd accompanied him up here down a hallway. Then again, "most people" was really only a few. The place was like a ghost town. Was this the fallout of the dissolution of S.H.I.E.L.D.? That was his guess. It unsettled him all over again. Had HYDRA been here, too? They must have been. Were the men and women still here really trustworthy?

Had Bucky been through here, too? What had he been thinking, walking through these weird space station halls?

Steve looked up, startled out of his thoughts, at the whirring sound of a door opening.

"Here we are, sir. Have a good rest of your trip." The agent said. He started to turn away, but then he stopped. "It was an honor to meet you, sir."

Steve was never sure how to react to that kind of thing. He started to stammer out some reply, but the agent turned and was gone after that. Luckily one of them knew how to avoid awkward situations. Steve had to laugh at himself at that.

He walked through the door and was greeted with something like a sense of déjà vu. Standing there, framed by an enormous glass window showing the vast expanse of space was a familiar figure in a black coat.

Annoyance was obvious in Steve's stance as he came to a stop in the middle of the room.

"You couldn't just come with me? What, did you magic yourself here."

"Magic isn't real, Rogers, no matter what you see that guy with the hammer do," Fury said, turning around. "You can lose the helmet in here, you know."

Steve's gloved hands fumbled with the thing for a few seconds before he wrenched it off his head. "Why do I have the feeling you're playing me somehow."

"I had something else I had to do, figured I'd catch you before you go out there. Give you one last chance to rethink it," Fury said. The last part had a dismissive tone, like he already knew what Steve would say to that.

Steve's answer was, of course, predictable.

"I came all the way up here, and you think I'm going to turn around now?"

Fury nodded. "From here, it's a long way. We have technology that…" He stopped, seeming amused. "Let's put it this way. Basically, you go to sleep for awhile and you wake up across the galaxy. This isn't my favorite place to send you. Obviously I have communications up, but if something happens, it will take a few days, maybe a week, to get you back to this station."

"So you want me to rethink in case you need me?"

"I don't want you to rethink. At least, I don't expect you to, so why waste time thinking on it? I'm just expressing where I stand."

"Where you stand? In the shadows? The Avengers–"

"The Avengers are fine, and will continue to be so. You, on the other hand, I'm not so sure. I don't know if this will help or hurt, but I think it's time."

It was all Steve could do not to throw that back at Fury. Who was he to decide when Steve got to see the best friend he ever had?

"So you're not going with me now, either."

"Negative. I'm needed here. And anyway, there's no one else up there but him."

"You left him _alone_ in the middle of _space_?!"

"The way I see it, that's the safest place for him."

"What, you just trap him in space so he doesn't–"

"He took the job knowing what it was. I didn't trap him anywhere. Stop making me the bad guy in this, Rogers. You want someone to be pissed off at? Keep being pissed off at HYDRA. I got the feeling you're gonna need that anger sooner or later."

Steve let out a short, sharp breath but he didn't say anything.

"Well, if that's all of _that_ , then follow me."

Fury explained some of how the cryosleep worked. Steve didn't like it much – he'd been asleep in ice for too long, as far as he was concerned. But if that was how it was done, if that's what it took, he'd do it for another fifty years. The rest of the technology – travelling so far so easily – went right over his head. It didn't matter.

Fury also gave him a list of instructions – what to do if he woke up and wasn't there, what kind of weaponry was safe on the transport craft, what to do if he woke up and he _was_ there, what buttons to push where to communicate back with the station or Fury directly. The list went on. Steve wasn't worried about remembering it, though. He'd always had a good enough memory.

"…and Cap?" Fury added to the end of his instructions.

"Yeah?"

"Good luck."

Steve felt groggier than he'd been prepared for when he woke up, allegedly at the other end of the galaxy. The very idea of that was still something he was struggling with, so he tried not to think too hard about it. Still, he pushed through it. Didn't matter how groggy he was.

The space station, if that's what it was, wasn't as shiny and grand as the previous one. This one was all dark metal. The glass was tinted, from what Steve could see of it as he made his way down the hall. He wondered how the ship had docked and everything, since there hadn't been a pilot that he'd seen. Kind of crazy that he'd trusted his life to a computer, now that he thought about it. The future was a really strange place.

He shook his head, half to clear his thoughts and half to wake himself up the rest of the way.

There weren't many places to go, and of course there weren't any _people_ around. It made the place kind of spooky, really, even for Steve.

Finally he reached what he assumed from Fury's description was the bridge area.

A figure was there, cleaning what looked to be a gun, but not one like Steve had seen before. He was getting used to these weird newfangled technology deals, though, and faster than he might've thought he would when he first woke up.

"Bucky," he said, tentatively, the word echoing in the empty metal space between them.

Bucky's shoulders tensed and one hand dropped to his belt – an instinct he hadn't kicked yet. He stopped before it reached the knife there. The tension in his shoulders eased, but it was a practiced move. It wasn't quite natural. Steve would know; he'd been watching Bucky for years before this had all gone to hell.

"I'm not Bucky," he said.

"Then who are you?" Steve responded, taking a step forward. His boot echoed in the space, too, and he hated it.

Not that it mattered. Even without the echo, without the dimmed and distorted reflection on the strange glass in front of them, Bucky would have known he'd moved.

He set the gun down and turned to face Steve, all in one fluid motion.

"No one," he answered, but there was something that flashed across his face as their eyes met.

"Everyone is someone," Steve responded. "Even if you can't remember who that someone is."

"What are you doing here?" Bucky asked.

"I wanted to see you."

"Fury sent you," Bucky said – not a question, but a statement.

"I asked him to tell me if he found you. Guess he waited awhile before he finally did."

"Why?"

"Because you're my friend."

"I'm not."

"You saved me."

"That doesn't make us friends."

"Damnit, Buck, we were friends before and we're friends now. Just because you got mixed up doesn't mean–"

"You have no idea what I've done," Bucky said, and his words were hollow.

Steve took another step. "You're wrong about that. I read the file S.H.I.E.L.D. has. I read everything."

"Then why are you still here?"

"Because I know you're not like that. None of that was your fault, your doing."

Bucky's hands clenched into fists, and Steve could hear the metal working in the left one. He swallowed, hard. He didn't like that arm, didn't like what they'd done to his friend.

"You shouldn't be up here," Bucky said, still hollowly.

"Well, it was a long trip and I'm not leaving now. I'll stay out of your way for awhile if you want, but sooner or later you gotta talk to me."

"No I don't," Bucky said. He turned away again, hands still clenched. He only managed to release the metal one long enough to pick up the gun again.

Steve had an awful moment where he thought Bucky would turn around again and bring the gun with him, but he didn't. He felt bad for thinking it, and opened his mouth to say something. But he was a man of his word, and he'd said he'd stay out of the way.

There were rooms – sparsely furnished, but they were there. It wasn't hard to figure out where Bucky slept, so Steve found another one. Fury had explained how things worked on the station, things like food and all. Steve wasn't sure where it came from or when there'd be more coming. How long had Bucky been up here, anyway? Fury said he was _working_ for him, but he was as annoying enigmatic as ever about what that really _meant_.

Steve sighed and sat on the small bed. He'd wait it out. What other choice was there?

It was a couple days, so far as Steve could measure them, before Bucky spoke to him again. He watched him leave once, thought about asking where he was going, but then just let him go.

When he got back, he walked around the whole place, and stopped in the doorway of Steve's room.

Steve hadn't exactly brought much with him, but he'd found a notepad and some pens and was drawing with them. It was something to pass the time, other than convincing Fury he wasn't ready to give up and come home yet.

Bucky looked like he hadn't expected to find Steve still there.

"Are you going to go home?"

"Not until I'm sure you're going to be okay."

"I've been fine all this time. I don't need a babysitter."

"No, you need a _friend_."

"Why are you so intent on this?"

Steve set the notepad down and stood up, though he didn't actually move to close the distance between them. "You saved me. You must have felt something. Remembered something."

"You saved me first. Now we're even," said Bucky. His glance slid sideways for a second, though, and Steve caught it.

"From what I was reading, that's not really your style."

"I thought you didn't believe what you read?"

"I believed it. I don't want to. I don't want to believe a lot of what I've heard lately, but sometimes you have to accept that the world isn't what you want it to be. I said it wasn't your _fault_ , not that I thought it was lies." Steve tried to keep his voice level, which took a lot of work. Regardless of what happened with Russia and on the helicarrier and whatever else, he still held on to the Bucky he remembered – the one who had been his only friend for a long time.

Bucky was quiet for a minute, and Steve thought he might leave again. Finally, he spoke. "I don't remember most of _that_ , either, if you want to know."

"Bucky…"

"Don't call me that," he said. "I told you, I'm not Bucky."

"Well, what am I supposed to call you?"

"Nothing," he said, and he did turn and leave then.

Steve followed him, not willing to let it go.

"I can call you James if that's better."

Bucky stopped and looked back over his shoulder – the left one, the _metal_ one, still glinting even in the dim, strange light on the station.

"Or I can call you whatever Fury calls you. He's got to call you something, right?"

Bucky's mouth twitched. "Fury just calls me 'kid.'"

Steve looked surprised for a second, then he actually laughed. "Well, that won't work. You're older than me!"

Bucky made a sound that sounded like it might have wanted to turn into laughter. He didn't let it.

"I want to show you something," he said, then kept walking. He didn't look back to see if Steve was following, but Steve took the hint and did.

Bucky punched some numbers into a keypad near a door. Steve had seen it, but hadn't had the code himself, so he hadn't been able to see what was behind it. When it opened, it revealed a short hallway with an elevator at the end. The two men got into the elevator, and Bucky hit another short sequence of numbers. It moved smoothly, taking them upwards.

It was a short trip. The door opened to another short hallway. On the other side of _that_ door, however, was a large open space. Steve imagined it had to take up the whole upper level of the station. There were computer terminals, some running and some not, along one side. In the center of the room, there was a bigger terminal. It looked a lot like the big terminals he'd seen Fury use, with a lot of buttons he didn't understand.

Bucky seemed to, though. He walked over and did something with the keyboard. Steve expected something to appear on the small monitor, so he moved closer to get a better look. The small monitor display was unremarkable at first. Something flashed across it, then something else. Then, there was a sort of electronic hum, and the wall in front of them changed.

It went sort of _fuzzy_ , and then entirely transparent. Steve was so surprised by it he actually took a step back. The display was so clear, it was like the wall had opened up. The stars outside were like nothing Steve had ever seen. He'd thought he was getting used to it, but it took his breath away.

"My god," he said, almost breathlessly.

Bucky looked at him for a second, warily. "It's something, isn't it?"

"It's…indescribable."

"Did you know the Russians were the first ones to go to space?" Bucky asked.

Steve was taken somewhat aback by the question. With some effort, he tore his eyes away from the endless expanse of stars in front of him and looked at his friend instead. Had Bucky looked that old the last time he'd seen him? That _tired_?

Bucky smiled, unexpectedly, and the smile chased the tired look away.

"I guess you'd think I would hate the Russians. I guess I do hate them. Or I hate Arnim Zola for making me into…this." He gestured with his left arm for emphasis. "But it's what I know. And what I don't know. And the Russians were the first humans to see something like this, back near Earth." Again he gestured with his left arm, but this time he indicated the scenery in front of them.

"And I guess if it weren't for them I wouldn't be here at all, huh? Maybe that would be better."

Steve reached out and put a hand on Bucky's shoulder, unable to stop himself. "No. No way, don't talk like that."

Bucky tensed under him and threw his hand off, more violently than he meant to.

Steve looked wounded, though he chased the look away almost immediately. Still, he could tell from the way Bucky looked at him, and then out at the stars, that he'd noticed.

"I'm sorry," Bucky said. "This is…it's not like it used to be."

"I know it's not. The world's different. It's been a long time. But…deep down, we're still us."

 _You're still you._

"I don't know about that," Bucky said.

They both looked out at the stars for a long time, not speaking.

"I knew you," Bucky said, abruptly breaking the silence.

"What?" Steve asked.

"I knew you. On the bridge. That's why I stopped. I still don't really know what I know for sure, but…I knew you."

"You mean you know me," Steve said, gently.

"What?" Bucky looked back at Steve again, finally.

"You still know me, Buck. And I still know you, even if you don't know yourself. That's why I came all the way out here – because I'm probably the only person left on that planet way back there that does."

Bucky shook his head and turned back to the expanse of stars, but Steve caught the ghost of a smile that sat on his lips, almost like the old Bucky.

"I like the haircut," he said.

Bucky snorted. "Thanks. I wanted…I wanted to be someone else. Not someone anyone made me."

"You wanted to be yourself," Steve prodded.

Bucky didn't answer. But this time, when Steve put his hand on his shoulder, he didn't pull away. It was progress, and Steve took it.


End file.
